After 50 years, sometimes it's time to just leave it alone.

[ljm2002]

98. I replied earlier but wanted to expand...

...on my response, because there was a nagging voice in the back of my head that said "But aren't some records sealed by the government sealed for exactly 50 years? and if that's the case, doesn't that mean that 50 years later may be exactly when we are able to get new information?"

It turns out my memory was correct. Many files were sealed for 50 years, including some pertaining to the Kennedy assassination. Here are a few links illustrating that fact (emphasis mine):

http://www.sanduskyregister.com/article/4845971

5 decades later, some JFK probe files still sealed

Five decades after President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot and long after official inquiries ended, thousands of pages of investigative documents remain withheld from public view. The contents of these files are partially known — and intriguing — and conspiracy buffs are not the only ones seeking to open them for a closer look.

Some serious researchers believe the off-limits files could shed valuable new light on nagging mysteries of the assassination — including what U.S. intelligence agencies knew about accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald before Nov. 22, 1963.

It turns out that several hundred of the still-classified pages concern a deceased CIA agent, George Joannides, whose activities just before the assassination and, fascinatingly, during a government investigation years later, have tantalized researchers for years.

"This is not about conspiracy, this is about transparency," said Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter and author embroiled in a decade-long lawsuit against the CIA, seeking release of the closed documents. "I think the CIA should obey the law. I don't think most people think that's a crazy idea."

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Freeing_the_JFK_Files

Freeing the JFK Files

(...)

The most prominent post-Watergate investigation into intelligence agency abuses, the Church Committee, conducted a limited investigation related to the JFK assassination. A slim report with the bland title "The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies" belied its devastating critique of the FBI and CIA's relation to the Warren Commission. But, as is the custom for Senate investigations, the files upon which the Committee's conclusions were based were locked up for 50 years.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-26/public-has-no-right-to-know-for-50-years-with-senate-redo-taxes.html

Public Has No Right to Know for 50 Years With Senate Redo: Taxes

Leaders of the tax-code rewrite in Congress pledged to keep ideas submitted by lawmakers secret for 50 years, seeking to assuage concerns that leaks of comments may jeopardize relationships with fundraisers or constituents.

(...)

The secrecy contrasts with most records. Senate Historian Don Ritchie said most files automatically open after 20 years, and some can be sealed for 50 years to protect personal privacy, national security, or the confidentiality of a congressional investigation. The records of Senator Joe McCarthy’s secret hearings were opened in 2003, 50 years after they were held, he said. A committee chairman can interpret “investigation” to cover the examination of legislation, he said.